[bawolff]

I wish we would stop calling these types of people hackers and just call them extortionists. The fact a computer was used to commit the crime really changes nothing about the crime.

If he physically broke in we wouldn't call him a nortorious lockpicker.

[pfoof]

For real, someone who has OpSec of his level (pack home directory to dark web) does not deserve to be named a hacker

[Manuel_D]

The two are not mutually exclusive: A hacker that steals people's banking info and drains their funds is a hacker and a financial fraudster. Hackers conducting ransomware attacks are hackers and extortionists. The fact that a computer was used to commit the crime is just a detail of how the extortion was carried out.

[jimbo9991]

Right but I agree with the above poster in the sense that the most relevant crime here is the extortion. Hacking can vary in severity from the totally harmless all the way to threatening the lives of millions. Leading off by calling this Hacking fundamentally fails to convey the severity of the crime in this case. "Finland's most notorious hacker" has a much better connotation than say "mass extorter of the mentally ill", don't you think?

The problem is that people are numb to news about "hackers" because often it's some sort of dumb story about some teenager messing around in somebody else's network and a netsec or government bureaucracy overreacting rather than properly securing their network, whereas this case is basically an instance of terrorism. It should not be possible for me to be confused which kind of hacking story this is from the headline. If I had come across that headline in the wild I would almost certainly ignored it due to the above.

Other folks in the comments have brought up the term "cyber-criminal", which I think also fails this same test for exactly the same reasons.

[chaxor]

Hacking can often simply refer to someone who writes code fast and loose, without care towards readability or reuse. The result usually looks like they were trying to be clever, but really it's just obtuse.

[taskforcegemini]

as in "he is a hack"

[stavros]

No, they are mutually exclusive. The word "hacker" originally meant someone enthusiastic about technology, someone who liked to tinker. The media distorted the word to mean "computer-related criminal", but that's a distortion.

The terms "hacker" and "criminal" are as mutually exclusive as "engineer" and "robber". Yes, maybe the robber knows how locks work so she can pick them, but "engineer" implies some level of ethics.

[labrador]

I think "cyber-criminal" is the term in common usage

[labster]

Yeah, but “cyber” is such a cringe prefix.

[mangamadaiyan]

It has impeccable pedigree, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics

[stavros]

Fun fact, the words "cybernetics" and "kubernetes" are different transliterations of basically the same word.

[mathieuh]

More on this: in French the letter y is written "i grec", or "Greek 'i'".

In the IPA, the sound of the French 'u' or German 'ü' is written with as 'y'. E.g. French "tu" -> [ty].

To speakers of languages without that sound, it often gets mapped to the vowel sound in the English word "loose".

So you can see what's happened here, "cybernetics" with the "Greek 'y'" pronounced as French "u" becomes "kubernetes".

I don't know if modern Greek still has that sound.

I love little realisations like this. Sometimes I wish I'd done linguistics instead of computer science.

[stavros]

Modern Greek doesn't have the French "u" sound, I don't know if ancient Greek did. The "υ" in "κυβερνήτης" (cybernetes/kubernetes = helmsman, governor) is pronounced "i", as in "miss".

Incidentally, the word "governor" comes from "kubernetes" as well.

[pyuser583]

Wasn’t cybernetics a borderline pseudoscience?

I mean read Stanley Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” (with the actors who pretended to be shocked).

It was fascinating until he got to the theoretical implications. All cybernetic gobbledegook.

I prefer thinking of the “helmsman” of Ancient Greece when I hear Cyber/Kuber.

[john2x]

I prefer ecriminals

[Fnoord]

Annie are you OK? You've been hit by.. a smooth ecriminal.

[bawolff]

Either way, it is still emphasizing the computer aspect, which to me seems incidental to his crimes.

[grugagag]

Hacker turned extortionist sounds like a better description of this guy.

[verisimi]

But then, if you only criminalised the crime, you wouldn't be able to justify all the intrusion and tracking of people's online lives!

If you want to pass legislation to eliminate peoples privacy and justify the fascist governance structure (government + corporations working together) in deanonymising individuals, you have to show that it is special. This is what is really going on - its not actually some special new type of crime that the law hadn't catered for - that's just what its sold as.

So, because 'online is the problem' is actually a sales job, the more one heightens the risk of 'online', 'hackers', etc the easier it is to take everyone's privacy away on account of the perceived thread and the purported fix. People will be happy someone is doing something, given a terrible event (crime) occurred!

The reality is that crimes will always occur; the threats to safety are overblown and already covered by the law; the fix does not materialise as indicated. But if you were sold on the idea (as most are) and thought it would make a difference you will sign up (to less online freedom). It doesn't even matter that this is happened in Finland, or whether it even happened at all - as long as people think handing over more control to the governance structure is the solution.

The truth is that you bought into the ostensible excuses. No need to keep making that mistake though!

[gala8y]

Yeah, to quote: "Don't Panic! A 'hacker' is different from a 'cracker'"

It's important to keep hammering it.

[bungle]

But on the other hand he is suspect, until convicted (probabilities, who cares, system does not work by probabilities).

[mr_00ff00]

Right he is a suspect regardless if it’s for hacking or extortion.

We don’t call him a hacker because he hasn’t been convicted. Your statement seems to miss the point of the parent comment.

[bungle]

What point? That we should not call convicted extortionist a hacker? I sure agree with you, but we (outsiders) should not call unconvictected (regardless of their previous history) people a hacker or extorsionist either.

[JumpCrisscross]

> we (outsiders) should not call unconvictected…people a hacker or extorsionist

Beyond reasonable doubt to take someone’s freedom. Not to privately judge them.

[Elhana]

If he ends up not guilty, your not-so-private judgement is a defamation.

[mannerheim]

In the US, defamation requires either knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. It's not reckless disregard for the truth to say someone who's been arrested for a crime did that crime, even if it may be premature.

[yencabulator]

"alleged extortionist"

[amelius]

Well, it would make people think about spending money on better locks.